Headlines from October 17, 2013

Collected from the shutdown: Guess the political grimace. #diversions
Biden welcomes EPA workers with muffins and hugs.
Also for your afternoon break: The National Zoo animal cams are back.
We’re not French; we don’t surrender. The “best” moments from the shutdown.
The craft beer craze hits Paris—enough to coin a new term, bièrologues, aka beer sommeliers. #maps
Starbucks creates robot baristas to fight the “inconsistent” coffee experience.
A tour of Chile’s nitrate towns, destined for commercial disaster and abandoned since 1960. #photos
Group estimates nearly 30 million people currently are enslaved worldwide.
Burka Avenger—Pakistan’s first animated series—confronts women’s rights and girls’ education. #video
Being an Afghan now also meant being the region’s ruling master of the beautiful game. Soccer’s comeback in Kabul. #longreads
Related: Soccer, money, and what New York City’s new team can learn from the London club that lost its soul. #tmn
Why so many children are getting myopia today may be due mostly to spending too much time indoors.
Did our daughter need what sounded like a paperweight for her young body in order to succeed at her job as a second-grader?
A new study finds evaluations can help all teachers improve—and predict who’s going to quit.
See also: A day in the life of a first-grade teacher in Brooklyn. #tmn
We kept to the rule of only one chapter a day. Philip Graham raises a reader. #books
Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson on licensing, Calvin stickers, and the possibility for an animated series.
Two years later, American governance is behaving as though it deserves to be downgraded.
What the GOP in Congress would look like as clowns, which, well. #photos
During last night’s House vote, a stenographer lost her composure and was removed from the floor. #video
America is governed by entitlements because they’re not classified as discretionary, so that’s where the jobs are.
An Esquire-NBC poll finds the new American center: They don’t like religion, guns, or politicians.
Food bank directors in Chicago and Arlington describe life at the front lines of poverty.
The true rebels of the Civil War were the freed slaves who enlisted to fight back at Southern slaveholders.
There are merely moments in pieces which are problematic. The practice of practicing.
In Somalia, locking a patient in a cage with a hyena is believed to cure mental illness.
See also: When a marriage and family counselor goes through a midlife crisis, here come the professional infidelities. #tmn
Russian-Dutch relations wither following a hate crime in Moscow; Russia considers a ban on tulips and cheese.
Beware the syrup: How to spot good gelato from 15 feet away. #food
This ain’t no Franzia. Japanese company releases wine for cats.
Oreos activate more neurons in a rat’s brain’s “pleasure center” than cocaine.
Pot smokers have lower BMIs, healthier insulin, and smaller waistlines than everyone else.
It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. Why 1729 is all over Futurama.